Surge in Journal Retractions May Mask Decline in Actual Problems

By Paul Basken

Scientific journals have been retracting unreliable articles at
rapidly escalating rates in the past few years, raising concern
about whether research faces a burgeoning ethical crisis.

Various causes have been suspected, with the common theme being
that journals are seeing more cases of plagiarism and fudging of
data as researchers and editors succumb to mounting pressure to
produce highly influential papers. As the editor of The
Lancet, Richard Horton, recently told The